Pete's Potatoes

Pete could have been a burro. He had extra long ears, four legs, and a vertebrae reinforced cow like tail with a fly swatting hair tuft at the end. Dad got him for us kids because he couldn't afford a horse. We found out later that dad didn't like horses because they are dumber then a dog. My mother hated any animal, but she hated horses the most. Each time any animal (except a goldfish or guppy) was mentioned my mother told her story of the planet's friendliest horse that only ever bit one person, my mother.

My dad liked animals; he had a pack of coon hounds (blue tick, redbone, walker and black/tan) costing an average price of over a thousand dollars per dog. This was back in the late fifties when a new car cost two thousand dollars. Pete the burro cost $400.

Some people called Pete a small jack-ass, they were thinking a jack-ass could be a mule, not so; mules are half horse and half burro. The horse is always the mother and a jack (male) ass on a ramp is the father. The Jack is actually called a "Mule-Jack." He is used only to create Mules; if he ever gets loose with a female donkey he won't mount a horse again. He is then called a "Jack-Off."

Switching parents is a bad idea. A big draft stallion father could split a female donkey in half at delivery. If the offspring survives it's called a Hinny. Pete was small, around 400 hundred pounds. Dad probably bought him for a dollar a pound on the hoof.

Ass is the common term that Pete could have been called. Dad bought a small saddle at an auction sale and girth hitched up Pete as a saddle ass. Pete didn't like the saddle. He liked it less when dad bopped him on the head with a claw hammer and slip rope choked him every time he bucked. Pete was a smart ass. He learned fast.

Pete never would cross a road. He must have had a bad experience with a man made surface in his former life as a burro. What this meant to the rider was that if Pete was in a full run and you arrived at a road he would stop by digging in his hoofs. You were still moving. Over Pete and on to the road you would skid. "Hee haw, hee haw." He always said that. On a hot summer day this was painful, as you slowly picked yourself out of the bloody bubbling tar puddle landing zone. Pete didn't like any type of artificial surface, grass was his friend. He loved grass.

Pete was a sexually active male. He liked females. Anytime either of my two sisters was around Pete, he was a big show off. His ears would reach for the sky. His nostrils would flare and start dripping male slime offerings. My sister's were young and could actually walk under Pete's belly. If they did, Pete would vibrate all over and a cloud of flies would seek a new home. Pete was in love.

Then Pete would get bad. This female attention would cause him to gravity drop into position a much larger male appendage then you would think an ass would have. Pete would then want the girls to scratch his ears. Ears are the most sensitive part of an ass. They also had to tell Pete he was a pretty boy. Mean while Pete would sweep his grotesque overdevelopment through the tall grass and thump it against his stomach. Sweep-thump-swoosch. I believe his favorite grass was about eight to ten inches high. He liked to hit the grass early while it still had some dew on it.

If I saw this happening I would rescue my sisters before Pete fired his volley of appreciation. One time my sister Snooky noticed Pete (being bad in his favorite grass) so she walked up behind him and swung up and hit him in the nuts. She said, "Pete bad." Pete's body became rigid. Pete had an emergency erection retraction. He fell over on his side while exhausting a musical note that sounded like a hee-haw without the hee. "Hhhaaawwww." I think Pete liked it when my sister hit him, because he never kicked or bit her.

During the winter months Pete was lonely and mean, snow covered grass was not his love interest. We were also mean to Pete. He was more work to keep fed. We had to stake him across the road in the tall snow covered grass. We rotated this job. My brother was too lazy one night to stake Pete across the road so he staked him in the front yard. Pete had no menu choice so he ate the ivy off of the side of the house. It was the only green item in the area. Pete got some type of sickness from the ivy that caused him to become paralyzed.

The vet told dad that he had to keep Pete on his feet or he would die. The vet thought that dad would set up something in a barn or the garage. My dad set up a double tripod pole sling, it looked like a homemade swing set. He made a sling of sewed together WAYNE feed sacks and hoisted Pete aloft with our help plus some neighborhood kids. (The Culp boys)

I started boarding the school bus further up the road. All the school kids kept asking, "Why is your ass hanging in your front yard in the middle of winter?"

Pete wasn't moving after several days exposed to the wind chill factor of northern Ohio. He was frozen solid. Dad determined this when he could tap on Pete's frozen eyes and he didn't blink. Our next job was to bury Pete.

We started chipping a burial site in the back yard permafrost. Each strike with the pick axe would release one frozen clump. We didn't dig very deep. To move Pete to the frozen grave, the ass burying detail tipped Pete over on to some old carpet material. (The tractor wouldn't start--too cold) We hand skidded Pete through the snow to the back yard burial site.

This is where we noticed that burro's have very long legs. We pushed Pete into our shallow burial offering, tits up. Pete's frozen legs jutted into the air their full length above the ground. To get his legs buried we would need to make a very large hole. I suggested that we chop his legs off with an axe. The ax didn't work very well; it was knocking frozen clips out of Pete. The dogs liked frozen Pete snacks. A hack saw worked much better. We cut his legs off and decided to finish the burial the next day.

The next day there were two legs missing from Pete's burial site. We discussed the option of leaving him alone for several days and maybe every thing would disappear. After many more hours of chipping frozen clumps of dirt, we tractor pushed Pete back into his new resting spot. (We built a fire under the tractor to prewarm it) Pete still didn't fit. So we ran back and forth over him with the tractor and sort of combined him with the soil. We then mound packed the frozen dirt over Pete. Pete's grave was so shallow that he could eat new grass from the root side when the spring Chinook winds thawed him out.

Our burial ceremony was brief; we each told where Pete had kicked us and bragged about where Pete had thrown us from the saddle. My two sisters's cried. But they were glad that dad hadn't cooked Pete up as mystery stew and served him for supper like he did with our pet lamb, Sammy.

Everyone sort of forgot about Pete after several years. Dad sold the saddle to a guy who had several great Danes. Then dad decided to expand the garden area he plowed. You could see where Pete was buried. His torso shape was pelted with thick luxurious friendly grass.

We were watching as the double plow hooked into Pete's carcass. The tractor reared, stalled out and the dogs all started barking. A large bubble of bad Pete odor tainted the air. We used the flip scoop to bring Pete some more dirt and dad added some seed potatoes. Pete's potatoes were the largest potatoes from the garden. My sisters wouldn't eat any potatoes that year. Me and my brother's would wolf down Pete's potatoes and then "hee-haw" all day long.

The Culp boys never did anything with the two legs they stole. Their dad told them they should have cut off and stole Pete's whizzer. "Tie a brick to it and hang it out to dry, makes a fine walking cane."

Pete wouldn't mind but you couldn't cross any roads with the Pete penis cane. You would need to walk in friendly morning grass, swing Pete, and tell him he's a pretty boy.